An Alternative Natural History of Sussex.
This blog shows the highlights of my day to day findings as a naturalist and ecologist living and working in Sussex. Delivered with a pinch of nihilism, a dash of sarcasm and absolutely no tweeness, here is my attempt to show natural history as it really is: Brutal, beautiful, uncompromising and fascinating...and occasionally ridiculous.
I have been studying natural history for some thirty years, nineteen in a professional capacity. I currently work in Sussex as a freelance entomologist, ecologist and botanist and specialise in nature reserve and rewilding management advice based on the interpretation of the surveys I carry out. I also run a number of identification courses. An advocate of the pan-species listing approach. My main areas of interest are birds, plants and invertebrates and a lot of my spare time is spent in the field. I am the county recorder for spiders and bugs.
I am trying to finish my annual monitoring of the arable margins of the Norfolk Estate this weekend but the weather has been challenging. I shot up to Lee Farm for an hour yesterday afternoon at 3.30 pm after the storms dried out (to make this afternoon a more realistic possibility). This is year six of me monitoring the Peppering side (and year three of the Lee Farm side). This year has so far been exceptional and it is amazing just how any new species are still turning up.
So, here is what happened in just one hour of monitoring two arable margins of two fields yesterday. I recorded 103 field dets in that hour, not in itself exceptional. At about 26 minutes into the survey I looked in the net and saw this!!! Carpocoris purpureiepennis. A recent colonist and a lifer, with very few UK records so far. It was the first to be noted on the new pan-species listing website. I was pretty stoked with this, as there are very few shieldbugs in the UK I have not seen now. I carried on looking through the same sweep net sample, and saw this! The same species but showing how variable they are.
Here they are side by side.
They are pretty big bugs, and strikingly different to anything else. They also look pretty odd underneath.
I walked back and swept a third one, which was very soft and clearly teneral, showing confirmed breeding. Apart from a nymph of this genus recorded in Kent earlier this month, this seems to be the first confirmed breeding of this species in the UK according to Tristan Bantock. Now there are lots of other species in the genus on the Continent, so you really do need to check any Carpocoris carefully.
On the same margin, I turned one big flint and found Eratigena picta, a Nationally Rare house spider with very few records nationally. I had in this field last year and last month.
Other species seen in that hour included a nymph of a Vernal Shieldbug, Dark Green Fritillary, Sitochroa palealis and Cerceris quinquefasciata. It was an eventful hour. I particularly enjoyed this five-spotted ladybird, which is clear an aberrant Seven-spot Ladybird, but shows the importance of correctly writing common names.
But the other day at Peppering was also really exciting. The first margin had a Hornet Robberfly! The first one I have recorded up there in six years.
Small Blues have colonised the margins this year with the new seed mix providing plenty of Kidney-vetch.
I found this scarce migrant moth, Loxostege sticicalis. A lifer and with less than 30 Sussex records. Sitochroa palealis and Evergestis extimalis were also new to the site. There were plenty of Clouded Yellows too.
Then I nearly tripped over this huge Large Conehead, another recent colonist! This is my first for the site and my first West Sussex record. This is an impressive cricket.
I also heard a Whimbrel flying over and found Knapweed Broomrape.
Last month was exciting too! I stumbled on my first ever Small Marbled there.
As well as a couple of Bordered Straws! Who needs a moth trap when you can just stumble upon moths in fields like this?! It also shows just how much insect migration is happening this year (although I have recorded many more migrant insects here than anywhere else on the Downs this year).
These arable margins are all in place to help the Grey Partridge project up there, which is a fantastic initiative and is really working to help biodiversity across the board. The farmers and keepers are working together with ecologists to produce something really exceptional. I have recorded over 1,000 species on just 16 fields over the years (and have hardly mentioned here the host of native rare species, with over a 100 noted so far). This year, the margins have been incredibly exciting and diverse though. Now hopefully I can get up there this avo and finish the survey for the year...
Rewilding features so prominently in the minds of conservationists right now, but we must not forget it's only part of the solution. Wildlife friendly farming can have huge benefits for conservation. I started this survey earlier in June. One big farm, split in two. One half on the Downs, the other half in the Weald. I am surveying as many taxa as possible as I can in six compartments in each half over six months from June through to May next year. So each round will take two days and be comprised of 12 hours solid recording.
Even though I have surveyed the top half of the farm for birds and arable plants before, I was blown away by how rich it was. I generated 1570 records during the first visit! All in all I recorded 532 species in 12 hours. That's 251 vascular plants and 203 invertebrates (that's just field dets and the spiders, all the others will be identified in the autumn and winter) and 48 birds. The unexpected highlight though is the umbellifer shown above. What I first thought had to be Corky-fruited Water-dropwort via a process of elimination (after some discussion with Frances Abraham and Nick Sturt of Sussex Botanical Recording Society) later turned out to be the nationally rare Great Pignut!!! A lifer! It's so hard to stumble on new, native plants like this. Some context; in 2018, SBRS discovered 12 plants only 175 metres from this site in an area of different ownership. A huge thanks to everyone for their help with the identification, Here are some more shots.
Other highlights included, a single plant of Narrow-fruited Cornsalad.
Just one Prickly Poppy but lots of Rough Poppy. This is one of my favourite plants.
White Horehound
And in the Wealden part, lots of Corn Spurrey.
And I really like this shot of Narrow-bordered Five-spot Burnet.
Three species of orchid (Fragrant-orchid, Common Spotted-orchid and Pyramidal Orchid). MASSES of Common Rock-rose.
Invertebrate wise, probably finding a new colony of Cistus Forester moths was the highlight.
And another Common Rock-rose specialist, Tinicephalus hortulanus. A very small mirid.
In the pockets of chalk-grassland, Omaloplia ruricola was locally frequent, a nationally scarce chafer. Not the best shot but you can see the variability here.
And the tiny Crytopcephalus bilineatus.
The site has dozens of territories of both Skylark and Corn Bunting. There was even a Corn Bunting holding territory on the Weald part of the farm, something I have not seen before. No doubt due to the population size on the top of the hill. Supplementary winter feeding and bird friendly stewardship options are really working. In the Wealden part, a Cuckoo was heard and a family of Nightingales seen with at least one fledgling spotted!
I really like this kind of approach to surveying, it's utterly exhausting but is a great way to make sure you get around a big site like this. And I wholeheartedly believe that this method ALWAYS gives you a bigger total (and a more structured and repeatable one) than if you had just wandered where you like, we have a tendency to go to the same areas after the initial period of exploration. It also means you are less likely to miss the best areas, which is always a possibility on huge sites. You don't get everything, you never can, but you if you want a good idea of what's on a site across a large number of taxa, this really works. Birds are almost entirely done by ear and switching between taxa can sometimes mess with your search image. The days go REALLY quickly when you are working with the timer on.
What's really interesting about this is after being fully booked by the end of January, my first full year as a freelancer, I soon lost half of my work by the end of March. Yet by May, much of it came back including some entirely new jobs. This one being a new job I would have had to turn down this year but due to Covid 19, I was able to take this job right on my door step! The fact the day was sandwiched between TWO twitches made it even more magical, my first in years. The Red-footed Falcon below was on the way to the site but the Blyth's Reed Warbler was a lifer at Beachy Head in the evening, my first new British bird in three years. Definitely one of the best days natural history in 2020. I can't wait for the next visits, with five more planned, is 1000 species possible on this amazing farm? I think so.
I love surveying farms, they are often full of surprises. Over the last 20 years, I have surveyed many farms, rewilding projects and nature reserves and one thing that is so important to remember is that they are all different. Not just between treatments but all farms are different from one another, all rewilding projects are different from one another. A one size fits all approach does not work. Neither does seeing anyone of these treatments as the answer to our problems, that's is a binary thinking trap, they are all important. If everyone did the same we would have a huge loss in diversity. That's why a spectrum of different approaches is so important, most of the interesting stuff happens in the grey areas and not the extremes. And without detailed and repeatable survey work, we are just uninformed doing what we think we should do without any real understanding, a bespoke and informed approach, in both space and time, is vital, as no site ever stays the same. My new motto, since I heard someone say it on the radio, is "Embrace complexity and nuance". Something that is sadly not popular in the days of social media, snap judgements and binary thinking we find ourselves in.
Yesterday was the ten year year anniversary of my first ever blog post. A thousand posts and over a half a million hits later and here we are. It's been a hoot, so much has changed for me in the last decade. Pan-species listing being a big feature of my natural history adventures which in turn led to becoming an entomologist and eventually going fully freelance and leaving Sussex Wildlife Trust. Working on those reserves though was an incredible experience and three of top ten were on Trust reserves.
When I first put my list together I had only seen 2748 species, as of today I am on 7648 species, that's almost tripled. I must admit I do love blogging, it's a nice way to inspire other naturalists as well as acting like a journal and a photo library. Oh and gripping friends off of course. I am at present however limiting my time on social media as it feels healthy to do so in this crisis. That said I put the 24th April in my diary at the start of the year so I wouldn't miss this date.
Before I get to the top ten of of top tens, I must say a huge thank you to Jo Knell for encouraging me to start the blog. Jo is sadly no longer with us and without her encouragement I doubt I would have started it. Here is the link to my first post which was about an encounter with a Snow Bunting we had at the top of Snowdon during a holiday. I've been blogging for so long now I can't remember not blogging.
Now for the top ten in reverse order. ALL of these encounters were in Sussex. If you didn't read these the first time round or need refreshing, I have included the links to the original posts, please do follow these as there are plenty of anecdotes for each encounter.
10). Pardosa paludicola
In April 2017 I found a healthy colony of this incredibly rare and impressive wolf spider at Butcherlands, Sussex Wildlife Trust's rewilding project, this being only the 8th site in the UK for this species. I have since found it another site. Read more here.
9). Columbus Crabs
In February 2016, after watching reports online, I had a hunch that I might find these crabs on Brighton beach after a storm and low and behold, there they were. This species lives in goose barnacles and floats across the oceans. These were the first records for the county.
8). Portuguese Man o' War
As above, there were reports about these washing up along the south west coast after storms in October 2017 and I really wanted to find the first Sussex one. I wasn't quite quick enough but did find my own one on Portslade beach.
7). Melodious Warbler
Last June, when I was finishing up a bird survey at Butcherlands that I had been doing for nearly a decade, I had a WTF moment when I heard a warbler singing I didn't recognise. After nearly losing it, I got a good view and a sound recording. So exciting. The fastest bird song I have ever heard. I loved that site and that survey. Butcherlands features twice in this list!
6). Philodromus fallax
The spider year listing challenge of 2019 was extremely fun and by October I had almost given up. Right at the end of a day of recording in Camber Dunes, a spider I had long given up hope of finding popped out! What a beautiful spider.
5). Polycera quadrilineata
2019 was probably my best overall year for natural history, so it's not surprising that four of the top ten are from this year. In March at the spring tide, I usually try and get down to the Pound at Holywell. This time Evan Jones and I had an amazing evening with four sea slug lifers, Evan found most of them but this one I found by netting sea weed, the tropical looking Polycera quadrilineata. See the rest of the blog for the other species.
4). Crimson Speckled
The oldest post here from October 2011. Michael Blencowe and I trapping at Beachy Head. We very nearly never even saw this moth that was resting in a bush, not the trap. I will never forget shouting CRIMSON SPECKLED!!!
3). Large Tortoiseshell
A lunch time walk at Woods Mill in March 2018 produced a Large Tortoiseshell. It's a terrible photo but just enough to clinch the ID. Another one that almost didn't happen as it flew off so quickly.
2). Coptosoma scutellata
My first first for Britain and an entirely new family of shieldbug at that. This was from Marline in July 2019, Where DO the wings go?!
1). Calosoma sycophanta
Stumbling across this beauty in an arable field at Bishopstone in June 2016 is going to take some beating. It really was mind-blowingly lucky. Big, beautiful, rare. It ticks all the boxes.
So that's it. Ten years reduced into one post. What a decade. So now what for the Lyons Share? Is it time to call it a day?
I have just got back from a slightly abbreviated visit to Ken Hill where I started the NVC map and finished the invertebrate field visits. I have so far this year recorded 747 species of invertebrates there. Definitely the biggest list for any site I have carried out a six-visit survey on, with 662 species recorded alone so far from the six standardised visits. There are dozens of tubes of specimens yet to process too. Will we get to a 1000 species? I was pleased to find Pogonocherus hispidulus by beating twigs and this proved a hit under the microscope. So I took some time today to get a good sequence of photos and I'm pretty pleased with them. This little longhorn beetle is a thing of exquisite complexity and beauty up close. Yet looks like a stinky old bird turd from a few feet away. A great tactic to avoid being eaten. Only works if you're really small though.
Not had enough Pogonocherus? OK, here's the other common one. Pogonocherus hispidus. Possibly the two most confusingly named species I know of. It's literally just missing the 'lu' at the end. A smaller less-contrasting beetle that didn't want to pose.
And the two together. Pogonocherus hispidus is a smaller beetle and has a smaller name than hispidulus. That's how I remember these two.
And Cassida vittata is always a pleasure to see.
Elsewhere on the site, a late flush of Corn Marigold (with Corn Spurrey it makes up the NVC community OV4) was growing after the Spring Barley had been harvested. Really didn't feel like late September at this point!
And Night-flowering Catchfly (on the left) identifiable long after flowering from the similar White Campion (right).
Birds were very quiet. Hardly any passerines about. Hobby and a Tree Pipit over were the highlights. One more visit to go though so maybe October will produce some rarities? Can't wait!
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